Sign-Language
Sign-Language
A system of signs established either traditionally (primitive tribes) or technically (deaf-mutes) for the purpose of communicating concepts or sentences, rather than letters or sounds or words as in signalling The question of the priority of vocal and gesture speech is much debated, but there is no doubt that primitive peoples used signs for communicating intentions and expressing their needs, especially when dealing with tribes with a different tongue. This is almost a psychological reflex, as it may be noted in the elementary improvised mimic of travellers among people they do not understand, and also in the vivid gestures accompanying the utterances of even civilized people like those of the Mediternnean shores. Sign-languages have a psychological, sociological and ethnological importance, as they may reveal the fundamental trains of thought, the sociological status, the race peculiarities, the geographical segregation, and even the beliefs and rituals of those who use them. Their study would also give material for various syntactical, semantical and logical problems.
Note on the Indian Sign-Language. Certain general principles concerning gesture speech may be established, by considering the sign-language of the North American Indian which seems to be the most developed.
A sign-language is established when equally powerful tribes of different tongues come into contact.
Better gestures are composed and undesirable ones are weeded out, partly as a result of tribal federations and partly through the development of technical skills and crafts.
Signs come into being, grow and die, according to the needs of the time and to the changes in practical processes.
Stimulus of outside intercourse is necessary to keep alive the interest required for the maintenance and growth of a gesture speech; without it, the weaker tribe is absorbed in the stronger, and the vocal language most easily acquired prevails.
Sign-languages involve a basic syntax destined to convey the fundamental meanings without refinement and in abbreviated form. Articles, prepositions and conjunctions are omitted; adjectives follow nouns; verbs are used in the present tense; nouns and verbs are used in the singular, while the idea of plurality is expressed in some other way.
The use of signals with the smoke, the pony, the mirror, the blanket and the drum (as is also the case with the African tam-tams) may be considered as an extension of the sign-language, though they are related more directly to the general art of signalling. — T.G.